Foundational Discoveries, Personalized Medicine
Research in the Department of Pathology is illuminating how cancers arise, what mechanisms underpin cancer growth, and how some cancers evolve treatment resistance. Our work encompasses innovative discoveries that advance our basic understanding of disease, refine and improve our ability to diagnose malignancies, and inform new treatment strategies. We are finding new biomarkers for early diagnosis, nominating new therapeutic targets, and building more true-to-life preclinical cancer models to test the efficacy of treatment interventions.
Our faculty and our affiliate clinical pathologists make hundreds of diagnoses each day that guide highly individualized patient care decisions at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Our research projects extend the full continuum from basic to translational to clinical sciences, and we collaborate with experimental biologists, data scientists, and clinical trialists. We see ourselves contributing to every aspect of the Dana-Farber mission and share its collective vision to have a world without the fear and burden of cancer.
Dr. Sidney Farber was a pathologist, and pathology research has been foundational to the Institute. The Department of Pathology, however, is much younger and was established as an independent department at Dana-Farber in 2016. Our faculty are employed by Dana-Farber and have research labs at Dana-Farber in addition to their clinical practice activities at the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Our faculty hold appointments as professors of pathology at Harvard Medical School.
The Department's centers and cores offer services related to histologic and molecular diagnostics and in vivo cancer modeling, including advanced spatial biology and imaging technologies, and state-of-the-art patient-derived cancer modeling services. See the Pathology Core Laboratory and the Center for Patient Derived Models for more information.
Leadership and Research Focus
Kathleen Burns, MD, PhD, was recruited to Dana-Farber to serve as Department Chair in 2020, relocating her research program from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore Maryland where she served as the Department of Pathology Vice Chair for Research and Programs. The Department of Pathology has undergone significant growth in recent years, adding new faculty and new research space in the Jimmy Fund building. The Department has been actively engaged in shaping and supporting institutional research initiatives at Dana-Farber and research training programs in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital.